White/paper birch leaves turning yellow

[bboynut]

Help!

I live in the Cincinnati, Ohio area (heavy clay soil) and just recently purchased a large number of rather large trees. Unfortunately, I didn't do any research first and just went gung-ho buying big trees that I thought looked "pretty". I didn't worry about what type of soil I had, etc.....

They were planted by the nursery in mid-May and to date, I've had one 3 1/2 dia. Yoshino Cherry go belly-up. The leaves turned yellow, fell off and consequently, died. Since this happened, I decided to do research (a little late I know) and now I'm paranoid about my other trees.

We haven't had any rainfall worth mentioning in almost 3 weeks so I've been worried sick about all these trees (19 total) and have been watering them 2x a week - for a half hour at a time. The other 18 trees were all doing fine until a couple days ago.

Now, one of my white/paper birch trees (largest ones I bought - appx. 20 feet tall) has about half of its leaves turning yellow. Some have fallen off already.

My question is this..... could it be that I'm over-watering them? According to my mother, house plants turn yellow when they've gotten too much water and she thinks this is the case with the birch.

Will all of the yellow leaves eventually fall off or is it possible that if I stop watering it for a while, they will revert back to green?

Also, if it loses half its leaves now, is there any chance for survival and that it will be back to normal come spring?

I hope someone can help me out and hopefully, put my mind at ease. I'm driving everyone nuts because I'm getting obessed over these trees. I'm afraid I may be loving them to death....

Thanks,
Jennifer

 

[Guy Meilleur]

Originally posted by bboynut
watering them 2x a week - for a half hour at a time. The other 18 trees were all doing fine until a couple days ago.

Now, one of my white/paper birch trees (largest ones I bought - appx. 20 feet tall) has about half of its leaves turning yellow. Some have fallen off already.

If it's just the inner leaves, don't worry, it's normal. But it sounds like you are drowning your trees which is easy because they were planted in a glazed clay pot with no drainage. No guarantees by the planter? Get some drainage QUICK by breaking up the ground deeply on the downhill side of the planting hole.